Yes, I can follow those instructions, but I'm still not sure whether this is getting to the source of the problem. The thing is that my duplicate MB tags are not due to the same song existing on different records. Maybe I got some of those, but the vast majority of what is blowing up my trackstat database are duplicate records of the exact same same file. The one with the most duplicates actually had 652 dupes, and there were many more with hundreds of duplicates.
I have discovered a convenient feature in Excel that actually allows you to remove duplicates with just a few clicks. I did that and it removed 45000 duplicates (and I defined a duplicate as having the exact same data in each and every column of the table). After that cleanup, I still have 20000 records left,, while I have around 9000 tracks on my server. The largrest number of duplicate MB tags for any one track is now 7. The reason why there are still duplicate MB tags left is that those records differ in some other aspect, such as "date added", "last played", "playcount" or "rating". But not (except some very few exceptions) the URL (i.e. the file). I can see that by having excel highlight all duplicate values within a specific column. As far as I can see, this means two things: one is that my (main) problem is not the one described at http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/TrackStat_plugin#Issues_with_duplicate_musicbrainz_tags And second, I will loose quite a lot of data if I let trackstat do the cleaning up by following by following the instructions at http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/TrackStat_plugin#Restore_statistics_after_upgrade.2Freinstall because (I suppose) trackstat cannot reconcile the different "playcounts", "last played dates" or "ratings" that its database contains for identical files (not just identical MB tags, which will be gone by then). As regards the first point, I would like to understand what the root of the problem is. Unfortunately, I have not the slightest clue. As regards the second point, I can at least make a suggestion for an alternative way of getting rid of the duplicates: I guess I need to find a way to merge (rather than delete) the remaining duplicates in my backup file, i.e. to tell Excel that it should keep the latest "played" date, the highest "rating", and add up all the playcounts, or something like that. Or can Trackstat do that? P.S. One quick comment on the "'Issues with duplicate musicbrainz tags' (http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/TrackStat_plugin#Issues_with_duplicate_musicbrainz_tags)": why is this an issue anyway? As far as I understood things, the Musicbrainz policy is that "duplicate" IDs will only be given to identical -recordings-. Which makes sense, because it simply is a duplicate and I thought the whole point of enabling Musicbraniz tags in Trackstat was that it will make Trackstat recognize these duplicates as such and treat the same song as the same, even when it exists in two files, e.g. one on the original album, and another one in some compilation so that if I rate the track on the original album, the same rating will be applied to the same song in the compilation. I'd consider this a feature, not a bug, as they say. *Server*: LMS 7.7.3 on a ReadyNAS Ultra 2 *Players*: Radio, Touch, Duet (Receiver & Controller), Boom, Squeezeplayer on iPad 2 *Remote control apps*: iPeng (iOS), SqueezePad (iOS), Squeezecontroller (Android) *Important plugins*: Trackstat, Spicefly Sugarcube, Lazy Search Music, Switch Player, SmartMix, Custom Browse ------------------------------------------------------------------------ chaug's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=47641 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=102245 _______________________________________________ plugins mailing list plugins@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/plugins
